Iowa Democrats held a press conference this morning highlighting what they call “tall tales” coming from Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

The key point: Perry is taking credit for jobs created largely by factors beyond his control.

“When oil went to $12 a barrel, the whole economy here collapsed and during the time when Rick Perry likes to point out that Texas created more jobs than the rest of the country combined, oil was at $146 a barrel,” said Texas State Rep. Mark Strama, a Democrat who participated in the press conference today.

The press conference was in preparation to Perry’s visit this evening to a Greene County GOP fundraiser in Jefferson and multiple stops in central and western Iowa on Friday.

Perry often takes credit for his state playing a key role in creating half of U.S. job growth in the past decade.

Politifact.com, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking service of the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, has rated the statement as “barely true.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that Texas gained 907,000 jobs between December 2000 and December 2010, while U.S. job growth was 1.6 million.

However, the argument that Texas has created over half the jobs in the United States ignores the positions created in the 31 states where job losses outnumbered gains in that 10-year period. It also fails to capture all positions added in states with job gains, Politifact found.

Strama today additionally criticized the focus on jobs as overlooking other critical factors, including the state’s poor ranking in areas of air pollution control, school dropout rates and its ranking as having one of the highest rates of citizens and children without health insurance.

Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Sue Dvorsky disagreed that the press conference was an attack on Perry.

“One of the responsibilities that we hold as the first-in-the-nation” caucus state “is to vet these candidates,” Dvorsky said. “This is not just a Republican process to vet these candidates. It is our responsibility to ask these tough questions.”